Archives for January 29, 2012

When Ted Wells’ fourth-grade class read Dr. Suess’s The Lorax, in which the Lorax character “speaks for the trees,” his students were inspired to do what they could to prevent a Hollywood studio from watering down Dr. Seuss’s environmental message.

Wells’ Park School class in Brookline, Mass., helped convince University Pictures, which is releasing a Lorax movie in March, to green-up the marketing of its film to reflect the book’s theme. The students started an online petition that collected more than 56,000 signatures. Movie star Edward Norton tweeted about the petition, andMother Jones and Grist also ran articles about the students’ project.

Wells updated the petition on Thursday: “They’ve changed their website almost exactly as my class requested!! Same visual, same link!!” The class had asked that the website have a Lorax Tip button that let viewers see a list of ways to help the planet. Universal also told Wells it was putting other environmental initiatives in place.

Wells said his students celebrated with a dance party during snack break. He also reiterated the famous quote from The Lorax: “Unless someone like you cares a whole awful lot, nothing is going to get better. It’s not.”

MIT researchers have devised a new way of computing an important algorithm, a discovery that has the potential to speed up much of our technology, from computers to medical equipment, and make it cheaper, too.

To do this, they figured out how to speed up the calculation of Fast Fourier Transforms — the “most important algorithm of our lifetime.” FFTs reduce complicated signals, like sound waves, to a fairly short list of numbers.

This breakthrough, Fast Company says, could lead to 3-D rendering on tablets, more accurate self-driving cars, highly detailed weather models, and more efficient image, sound and video compression techniques.

Please bear with us while we retroactively post obituaries from back issues of Bowdoin Magazine. This process has currently skewed the chronology of our listings. We're working to fix the problem. In the meantime, please go to bowdoinobituaries.com and search by class year.